Adventures, Misadventures , Reflections and Profanity

I have some days off coming up and they happen to fall on my husband's birthday so we have elected to go out of town and head north to go see me family. While we are there we plan to do many things, including going for a camping trip for part of our vacation together. I absolutely LOVE camping and I have not been in many years so I am very much looking forward to it, but when it comes to planning a trip out of town, I have mixed feelings. There is of course the excitement of a change in the routine and getting to go do fun things while not working, but here I am, three days and a wake up from our departure date, and I am already exhausted just thinking about everything that needs to be done. There is also the anxiety of visiting my family. My husband is gracious enough to agree to spend his birthday trip with his in-laws, but I can already sense tension surrounding the idea. My family and my husband are VERY different people (a big part of why I love him so much!), and in the pas...

The experiment of using cannabis to treat my extreme menstrual discomfort was an astounding success. I did not use one single narcotic pain pill nor did I feel the urge to reach for alcohol to soothe and dull my sharp cramps. I was blown away. Additionally, the pain in my left knee which is ever present was also calmed quite a bit, reducing to a distant ache rather than the white hot needle pain that I have grown so used to. The biggest benefit, however, was the huge reduction in my anxiety. Over the course of a few days, I finished both of the joints I had purchased. While the benefits were fairly incredible, the economy of this type of medicine was not so incredible. I cannot afford to spend $42 every three days. I was feeling disheartened about the cost, but my husband advised that we go back to the dispensary and talk to the experts about it and see what they advise. So back we went to the dispensary. The same staff greeted us warmly and we were shown into the sales room. I spoke...

This year I completed all of the credits required for my bachelor's degree except for one single class. The class in question began on the very day my mother died this year. As a result I missed most of the class because I was overcome with grief and anxiety. After that it was impossible to catch up and the result was the only class I ever failed in my entire college career. I have to make up those three elective credits before I can obtain my diploma. I have been using the website StraighterLine.com to take the class. I have presently completed everything in the class except for the final exam. My current grade is 91%, but I have been putting off the final exam for over two months. Why is that? Well, I will tell you. I have opened up the computer multiple times over the past several weeks with the intention of taking the stupid final exam and then getting my credits and moving on with my life by obtaining my bachelor's degree and likely moving forward to grad school. When I ...

Warning! This post contains graphic descriptions of menstrual distress and the discussion of drugs which are now legal to consume n the state of Nevada. Yesterday I had a surprise day off from work in the middle of the week. My homeschooling student wasn't feeling well and so his parents cancelled school. This doesn't happen often, but when it does I like to make the most out of the day and try to be as productive as possible. I have been intending to use some old rope I had laying around to make my first attempt at a rope rug for my shop and so at 7:30am, I busted out the rope, my hot glue gun, and the Netflix and got to some early morning crafting. It was really wonderful to sit, enjoy my iced coffee that I would usually be trying to drink as fast as possible on the freeway on my way to work and to just do some mindless craft work. That kind of crafting is on the short list of things that actually relax me (sex, laughing, crafting, eating is pretty much the whole list). So ...

Yesterday I tried something that I have never done before: I attended a support group for grieving people. Having lost 4 very important people in less than two years, the most recent of which was my mother in January, I have been struggling with grief and anger and exhaustion from it all. the anger and grief has started to make me a bitter person and I have caught myself being cold or short with people that I love, and that just isn't acceptable to me. I started researching online for some resources for free grief counseling. Being a teacher, there just isn't a lot of extra money to go around, so it was imperative to find something for free. My first choice was to find a grief counselor of some kind, but unfortunately one on one counseling just isn't ever free, or even affordable from what I could find, which I guess makes sense. That left support groups, which honestly scared the crap out of me. the thought of sitting and crying in a room full of strangers sounded like a t...

Yesterday I was given the gift of a day off in the middle of the week. I had all sorts of intentions for being as productive as possible. There is always so much to get done around the house and I usually fall very far behind simply because there is so little time to actually get it all done. I started the day by cleaning out the garage with my husband, something we have been meaning to do for over two weeks, but hadn't been able to get around to doing. When did I get so much stuff?! And why do I feel the need to have accumulated more things than actually fit inside of my home? What is even the point of that?! As we were going through boxes and getting rid of things and sorting the rest, I felt my anxiety rise up inside of me and with it, the inevitable self-hatred that always comes along with it. I feel this way a lot lately, actually. Just overwhelmed and lost and afraid and just plain low. It is hard to describe, but if I am being honest it has been going on for close to 18 mont...